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We cross the room to the soundproofed black door, pull it open, then take the stairs upwards, ascending out of Darragh’s world and back into our own.
Chapter 12
Elio
When we emerge from Briar and Boar onto the street, I swear under my breath, momentarily blinded by the fiery spray of light on snow. In my haste to get over here this morning, I forgot to bring along a pair of sunglasses.
I also didn’t put on clean clothes or shower. I’ll need to rectify that soon. Can’t go to my Songbird all rumpled and out of sorts. I’ve gotta live up to the standards set out by my impossibly pretty fiancée.
I close my eyes and think of her on the drive home, using the image of her to soothe the ache in my right side and the tight pains in my wrists and hands. I’ll be home soon, and I can shower and then slide back into bed beside her. I wonder if she’s still asleep, and open my eyes to take a look at the security app on my phone. Looks like she’s up. She’s in the kitchen drinking something, maybe some tea. Her violin and bow are down there, too, and my chest constricts at the thought she might have been playing music without me there to hear it.
The security app alerts me to something else, too. Uncle Vinny’s car at the gate, making its way up the driveway.
Fuck.
I knew I’d have to deal with my uncle eventually, but I was hoping to have at least a little quiet time to myself with Deirdre first. If I ever wanted to hear her play for me, today is one of those fucking days.
But Uncle Vinny isn’t the sort of man who likes to wait. And I should know better by now than to expect to just go home and relax whenever the fuck I want to.
No rest for a Titone. Not in this town, anyway.
We’re actually pretty close to home, now. We pull up to the security gate on my property and then get to the house just as Uncle Vinny is striding up to the door.
He turns at the sound of the car’s tires behind him, scowling into the sunlight as Curse parks and the three of us get out.
Uncle Vinny doesn’t waste any time.
“Where the fuck have you been?” he says, jaw working.
“Curse and I had some business to deal with up north,” I tell him as we walk up to the door where he’s waiting.
That business being Deirdre’s scumbag ex, Brian, who now finds himself without a dick as recompense for even dreaming he could touch her.
“What kind of business?” Uncle Vinny says as we head inside. “Since when is your business not my business?”
“Since it involves my fiancée.”
“Oh. Yeah, don’t think I know about that,” my uncle snarls. “Blasting that shit all over every local newspaper’s website without even bothering to consult me. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking about my glad tidings,” I say dryly.
“How the fuck did you have time to get that drafted and send that out when you were up north?”
“We got back last night. I did it this morning.”
“Where the hell were you coming from just now, then?”
“Had to have a little chat with Darragh.”
Uncle Vinny swears loudly in Italian then fixes me with a furious stare.
“Running up north to deal with secret shit you won’t tell me about. Making dumb-fuck political moves in the media without running it by me. Now you’re antagonizing Mad fucking Darragh. And for what? All for some freckled Irish whore?”
If he were anyone else on this Earth, he’d have gotten a knife through the eye for what he just said. But as he’s the man who saved my life and raised me as his own, instead I simply say, “No one is allowed to insult my fiancée in my house.” I lean closer, maintaining eye contact. “No one.”
Uncle Vinny’s eyes narrow.
“I never took you for a fool, Elio. But your behaviour recently is making me rethink things.”
